Menu Plan Monday - July 30

I've had a revelation this week. I always like those, LOL.

I printed out my own blank Monthly Menu Planner (see left sidebar under 'downloads') to write in last week's menu, then put the mostly blank sheet up on the fridge. There's enough space to fill in six weeks worth of menus, but I was pressed for time so I just jotted in the one week and told myself that next Monday (ie, today) I'd fill in the other five weeks. It's really not that hard, after all. I have a formula.

So all through the week, I've had little brainstorms about meals. I was surfing and gleamed an idea from somewhere for a certain dish - instead of writing it down on scrap paper then losing it as I'm apt to do, I jumped up and wrote it into the appropriate square in the second row. Later on that day I was flicking through some old magazines ripping out pages to keep (the rest gets recycled) and spied another recipe. I slipped the sheet into the front pocket of my Home Management Binder and wrote the recipe name directly into the right spot on the Monthly Menu Planner. This went on all week.

Now normally, I'd have to spend maybe 30 mins actively menu planning, looking through cookbooks, scouring grocery store fliers. Today though, I'm at a loss. I don't have to 'menu plan' - all my squares for this week are already filled up! When did that happen? LOL.

The Menu Planner that is up on my fridge at the moment has room for part of July, all of August, and a couple of days in September. That's the beauty of a non-dated form I think. You tailor it to your own needs. I've even written in the 'regulars' right through for the whole six weeks. Monday is Pasta night at Lizzie's Home, so in any four week period we have Spaghetti, Ravioli, Spaghetti and Lasagna, in that order. Fridays were recently instigated as Leftovers Nights and I'm careful to plan something for Wednesday or Thursday that will give plenty of extra serves. Sunday nights are Roast, Homemade Pizza, Roast, Takeaway in that order, and like Pasta night, we just keep repeating. So that's already three nights out of any seven taken care of.

Now, onto this week's menu!

Monday ~ Ravioli (rolls)
Tuesday ~ Crispy Chicken Soft Tacos
Wednesday ~ Baked Potatoes (various toppings)
Thursday ~ Shepherd's Pie (vegies)
Friday ~ Leftovers

Saturday ~ Chicken Parmigiana (carried over from last week, with chips and vegies)

Sunday ~ Takeaway

A couple more foody snippets:

I made Chocolate Cake and Choc Chip Nut Muffins (variation from the Berry Muffins if anyone in Australia is playing from home!) from this cookbook this week. There were mixed results. Co-incidentally I used my brand span---- whoops, I mean, brand new silicone baking pans to make them. The cake itself, my first from scratch in a long time (gulp...you didn't hear that from me) was delicious but the flexible pan just didn't hold it together well. I was thinking it would turn out magically intact and perfect when 'popped' out as the label said but it didn't. No matter, I will persist. The reason I bought a few of the silicone pans in the first place was to stop my recent speight of 'hollow base syndrome'....you know, when the bottom of your cake sticks to the base of your supposedly non-stick teflon wonder. I also bought the 6-cup muffin pan and a loaf pan in silicone (Willow Bend n Bake) and did the muffins in silicone as well...

...lets just say the first batch's failure was due to human-oven-timing error, and leave it at that, LOL. The second batch turned out pretty well. The recipe only made a dozen though, so when the first 50% went into the trash the remainder only constituted two days worth of lunchboxes for my three kids. Still, was better than nothing I suppose.

I'll reserve judgement on the silicone pans for now, but I'm still glad I didn't immediately get rid of my old non-sticks :)

Cheers,
Lizzie